Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Window on Eurasia It’s ‘Too Early’ to Celebrate the Return of Elected Governors, URA.ru Says

Paul Goble

Staunton,
January 25 – “It is too early to celebrate” President Dmitry Medvedev’s
proposal, under pressure from Russian society, to restore gubernatorial
elections because he will soon be out of office and because the arrangements he
and Vladimir Putin have made mean “the first” such votes would take place “only
in 2016,” according to the URA.ru news agency.

According
to the agency, which often breaks stories before Moscow outlets, officials in
the Urals region have received “explanations from the Presidential
Administration” that suggest no direct gubernatorial votes will begin before
2013 and that many may be appointed long after that (www.ura.ru/content/svrd/24-01-2012/articles/1036257519.html).

Last
week, Medvedev made his much-ballyhooed proposal to restore gubernatorial
elections, albeit with a number of qualifications including in most cases consultations
with the president. Then on Monday, Prime Minister and president-presumptive
Vladimir Putin said that there should be a “public” discussion about whether to
have such votes.

“But the
entire dispute,” URA.ru continues, “is to put it mildly premature,” given that
the staff of several regional heads in the Urals have told the agency that “their
leaders are calm and not even preparing for direct elections,” given the focus
on the presidential campaign and on Putin’s earlier elimination of votes on
these positions.

Aleksandr
Burkov, first deputy chairman of the Duma’s federal affairs and local
administration, confirmed the news agency’s conclusions, pointing out that any
new electoral law would certainly be reviewed by the incoming president and
incoming government before going into force.

That
will be made all the easier by the public discussion Putin has proposed and by
the plans of many governors to ask for a new expression of trust after the
March 4 elections, as “Kommersant” reported, requests that would likely keep
them in office until 2016, when the current term of the Duma expires.

Moreover,
Burkov told URA.ru, “in key regions, governors will be appointed.” Among those
would be the heads of “all the subjects of the Russian Federation included in the
Urals Federal District, except for that of Kurgan oblast” as well as likely in
many other parts of the country.

The Just
Russia deputy added that Medvedev’s draft in any case will have to be modified.
And the news agency stressed that those who think the election of governors is
a done deal may be disappointed, thereby suggesting that this concession to
public opinion may be little more than an electoral ploy rather than a move to
return to genuine federalism.